process of walking into Rikers was anxiety provoking. My thoughts would range from a fear of being attacked, (although I was never threatened by an inmate) to what if I beeped on the metal detector and I was arrested. Both my thoughts were irrational but felt real to me. Every time that I went to Rikers, my anxiety lessened because instead of focusing on what could happen, I changed my thoughts to being prepared if something did happen. I prepared for the worst, and actually found myself excited to talk to the inmates and assist them in making sense of their trauma.
When you are able to interpret your fear as excitement, change happens in your brain and your perspective shifts. Here's how. We have cells in our brain named pyramidal cells that are responsible for our guesses and conclusions. They feed our thinking and predictions to the amygdala and can influence our interpretation about the dangerousness of the outside world. The bottom line is this: as we create and narrate our own story, why not make it one of courage and triumph over fear? Being curious, committed to learning, and open to examining our experience lends to shifting from fear to courageousness.
The effects of trauma on children contributes to their inability to self-regulate and have healthy relationships much like it did for my criminal justice involved adolescents. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network in the United States reports that up to 40% of students have experienced or been witness to traumatic stressors in their lifetime (Brunzell, Waters, and Stokes 2015). Many children are not taught to question their fears in an effort to understand and dismantle them. As a result, they are in constant react or battle mode. In school classrooms, fear and trauma may present as disruptive, impulsive, defiant disorder, formally labeled as Attention-Deficit Disorder, Acute Stress Disorder, or even Bipolar Disorder and compromise learning because of frequent suspensions, failed grades, lower expectations, and suboptimal communication between teachers and students. Can you imagine how engaging and powerful these classrooms could be by flipping the switch on their trauma and fears and turning on courage and an enhanced understanding of themselves as adaptive beings?
Fear Is Paralyzing
Today, as I (Jed) type, it is Friday September 11, 2020. Nineteen years from the date that fear, trauma, and anxiety gripped our entire country. I, like most of you reading this, remember exactly where I was the moment our world changed forever on 9/11/2001. I was working at a school as rumors started to buzz around the school that morning about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. I couldn't fathom what I was hearing. I assumed it was a Cesna or some other small plane that veered off course due to a pilot's medical issue or possibly even a suicide attempt. I was a news junkie and had heard of something like that happening before. I was disappointed I couldn't get to a TV at that moment, and the luxuries of live streaming Internet just weren't a thing in 2001. The only person I knew who would be watching the news at the moment was my dad. He and I had the worst relationship, he was an abusive alcoholic, but he was also a faithful morning TV watcher, so I gave him a call on my red Samsung flip phone. It is funny how you remember details of some things and for the life of you can't remember others. Here is what I remember of that phone call.
Me: Hey Daddy, what's going on in the world? I heard there was a plane crash at the World Trade Center. Is that true?
Dad: Yes, I am watching the news now. (He paused to take a puff of his cigarette.) They are saying it was a passenger plane full of people, but they haven't confirmed it yet. Lots of smoke coming out of one of the towers. (He exhales his own smoke.)
Me: WHAT? Are you kidding me? What in the …
Dad: Oh My God SON!!!! Oh my God … Oh My God!!! Another plane just flew into the other building!! I JUST SAW IT ON LIVE TV!!!!
Me: What? You must be …
Dad: Oh my god! SON! IT'S AWFUL!!!! There was a huge fireball!!! WHERE ARE YOU? I THINK WE ARE UNDER ATTACK! (He continued to scream in disbelief.)
The rest of the conversation was a blur. Eventually we hung up, but I have no idea how the call ended. Dad was terrified and his fear came through the phone and shook me to the core. “What should I do?” I thought.
I walked hurriedly into the school from the playground where I was standing to make the call. I went straight to a co-worker's classroom and told her what I had heard from my dad. We were teaching first grade at the time so we tried to remain calm, but we were both incredibly scared. It was almost impossible to stay calm because a group of students from the school were in NYC for their senior trip. Former students, kids of teachers, siblings of our students, part of our community … and their destination that morning was supposed to be the towers.
Within moments it seemed everyone in the school knew. The team I worked with at the time did the best they could to keep the news quiet so that the students wouldn't panic, but man was it hard. It got even harder when the principal passed by the rooms around 9:40 to tell us that a plane had hit the Pentagon. I will never forget his face, his tone, his words … “PRAY. We are under attack.”
I didn't recognize the fear I experienced that day. Our country under attack? By whom? For what? As I have mentioned previously in this book, I had a very violent father who abused my mom and I both. I am also a gay man in the Bible Belt South. I know fear well, but that day … it was a whole different fear than I had ever experienced.
I was paralyzed from working. I couldn't think. I couldn't teach. I could hardly even move. I was not in charge of students at the time so I, like the rest of the US, found the nearest TV and began to watch what was happening. I was paralyzed. Fear gripped me so tightly I ceased to function.
As the day moved on and we all realized that we were indeed under attack, the school I worked for at the time decided to dismiss early. It was the right call. No one in the building could function. Parents of the students on the trip to NYC began to come to the school to pull their other kids for the day. Teachers who had kids on the trip were not able to do their work. None of us were. I was so grateful they sent us all home.
I got home and my two roommates, Matt and Luke were there. We all sat around the TV with our eyes so fixed on every detail that the paralyzation I felt at school only worsened. Normally, home is a safe space. A place where the worries of the outside world seem to vanish, but not this day. I called my mom. She invited us over for dinner with the whole family. We needed to be together. It was only later that night after a meal with my loved ones that I felt somewhat better. Then, it started all over as I realized how many thousands of people would never have that moment again because of the day's events.
As I typed this portion of the book, I did some research about survivors of that day. I ran across an interactive timeline that details the day moment by moment. There I heard a recording of Constance Labetti, an Aon Corporation employee on the 99th floor of the South Tower, describe seeing Flight 11 heading toward the North Tower.
I just stood frozen. I didn't move. I couldn't move. I just stood at the window.
Fear is paralyzing.
Fear's Capacity
Everyone is afraid of something. We all have fears. Some big. Some little. Some that could shake us to the core. Mr. Lowe no doubt experienced fear that morning, and the student he met with the gun had fears. In February 2020 on a Thursday morning the weather in Spartanburg, SC, where I (Jed) live, was quite volatile, and fear was almost tangible across the area. Local meteorologists were on television bright and early, warning of potentially hazardous weather approaching. Even a meteorologist from New York City that I follow on Instagram, @reedmcdonough, posted alerts on his social media for dangerous conditions across our region. Based on the confidence the weather forecasters had that severe weather was incoming, I was surprised that schools didn't delay or cancel for
